


Son of Monster, Monster of Son

by Colerate



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Blood and Gore, Dark, Gen, Light World Building, Magic, Medieval, One Shot, as in I contexualised Ed and the gang in the witcher world, might be my darkest one yet, set at some point when Geralt is travelling around doing his job, set in the witcher universe, takes the origin of Ed and Al and witcher-fies it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:21:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colerate/pseuds/Colerate
Summary: "I have little patience for small talk, so I will cut to the heart of it," she began and her face took on a grim quality. "There are two orphan boys in this village and I am a grandmother to them as much as I am to my own flesh and blood granddaughter. I love them and any other person in this village will tell you that they are wonderful children, but it is them that I fear have created the monster that now feeds upon us."
Comments: 30
Kudos: 125





	Son of Monster, Monster of Son

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this before watching the last two episodes because I was that inspired. Wrote the full 8k in one go.

Resembool was just the same as any other backwater village that Geralt had ever travelled through. Squelching mud made up the paths between one farmer's lot and the next and all lines eventually converged at the village centre. It was there that most of the populace could be found, what little of it there was, milling in and out of the single general store and drinking at the bar on the ground floor of the inn. 

Gently creaking in the wind, the hanging wooden sign above the inn's entrance boasted a total of two rooms and three beds for any travellers who had no choice but to stay the night when passing through. When he asked the barkeeper, a middle-aged man with a stick of barley between his teeth, he found that both were available and he paid a pretty penny for the single bed.

Usually, Geralt wouldn't bother with a formal stay and probably would have continued travelling until the sun rose and he arrived at the next town over where there was more entertainment to be had than sleeping in straw and drinking piss whiskey. Unless Roach needed the rest, but Roach was doing just fine and would be sure to let him know if he was feeling otherwise.

But rumours had travelled far from this village, rumours that broke across borders and slipped into the mouths of tavern goers several towns over. A monster had been birthed a few months ago, a wretched and unholy creature. They said its bones reached for the heavens while its limbs tore the ground in search for hell, said that its innards pulsed and heaved in open air for all to see and that its face was a portrait of all the damned sinners that had since left the world.

Geralt never put much stock into the finer details of hearsay, but where there was smoke, there was fire, and the smoke was so dense and black that it blocked out the sun.

Nursing his drink in the corner, half-veiled by the alcove obstructing the candlelight, he watched the village folk gather as the night grew older. There were very few pretty faces among the crowd, although he could see some aged beauty in the lines of some of the older patrons, but he wasn't looking for that sort of gig tonight. He was in search of something that set itself apart from the cheery drunkard shenanigans and giggling gossiping. Searching for someone who was perhaps a little more maudlin. Someone who could not find it within them to smile with the crowd when darker activities were afoot. 

When the moon reached its peak, he saw that someone. Or rather, that someone saw him. A petite old woman with a stern face entered through the propped open door and waved off the barman's cheery familiar greeting. For a moment, she stood, scanning the crowd, until her squinting eyes met his through the frames of her round glasses. Her walk towards him was meandering as she ducked more greetings from village folk, taking her time to reach him when everyone stopped paying attention.

"I heard there was a witcher in town," she said once she dragged a nearby stool over to sit across from him. There was no fear in her eyes, instead, there was something that was oddly comfortable. Not the typical reaction Geralt garnered from those who realised what he was. "I would have been here sooner, but I had to put my granddaughter to bed... she's a little menace sometimes, either tinkering or reading until the sun shows its head."

Geralt hummed noncommittally and waited for the grandmother to either introduce herself or get on with the explanation. Fortunately, she understood the cue and carried on. "My name is Pinako but you may be more familiar with the name Rockbell."

It was a little familiar. Rockbell was the name that had been inscribed on a disgraced knight's leg that he had met some time ago. Or rather, it had been inscribed on the replacement. Magic had joined flesh to metal and his limb worked as well as any other, but he'd served one of the nations where mixing magic with mortal men was frowned upon because of something or other about its ties to elves. "I know the name... you are a sorcerer?"

"Oh, no, I know enough magic for my profession and that is all, it's a dangerous power that shouldn't be messed with outside of necessity," she chuckled as though she was batting away a little flattery but her words were anything but quaint. It would seem that there was more to the woman than she let on. But Geralt wasn't here to decipher an old woman's complexities, he was here for a monster and coin. "But enough about little old me, I assume you came to Resembool for the monster, yes?"

"Indeed," Geralt nodded and took a sip of his drink. A couple of people were giving them curious or worried looks on occasion but were too far away to hear what was being said. Surely, if the monster was as rampant in its killings as the rumours suggested, the job he was about to receive was common knowledge. Yet it appeared that Pinako did not want to be overheard.

"I have little patience for small talk, so I will cut to the heart of it," she began and her face took on a grim quality. "There are two orphan boys in this village and I am a grandmother to them as much as I am to my own flesh and blood grandaughter. I love them and any other person in this village will tell you that they are wonderful children, but it is them that I fear have created the monster that now feeds upon us."

Two... children. Over many decades, Geralt had seen all manner of monsters birthed by even more monstrous humans but never had he encountered any children who had the potential to do the same. "What makes you think that?"

Pinako's brow creased and she seemed to carefully consider her next words. "Their father... he left when they were young, but he did not take his research with him. That house is filled with all manner of magic waiting to be learnt and used and Edward and Alphonse are nothing if not eager to learn. I wish I could be there to oversee them, but I have a family to take care of and a business to run in my own house."

Two children with no parents to ask after them, left alone in a house potentially harbouring dark magic. Now, the whole situation made more sense. "Could you introduce me to the children tomorrow?"

"Not quite," Pinako admitted regretfully. "I haven't seen Alphonse, the youngest, since before the attacks... and Edward refuses to let anyone inside the house, for good reason I suspect."

At first, it seemed odd that the woman hadn't forced her way into the house to find the missing boy, but she must have put a lot of stock into Edward's judgment of danger, even if she couldn't trust his judgement of what magic should be left unexplored. "Perhaps you could give me directions then and I'll investigate come morning, but there is a small matter of payment."

"It's no matter, my profession does not pay often, but it pays well when it does. Name your price."

Geralt got the feeling that Pinako wasn't the type to go back on her word. "200. I'll collect once the job is done."

"I can do that," Pianko gave a satisfied nod and got up from her chair. But, before she left to make her way back through the slowly dissipating crowd, she turned to face him one last time with a fierce look. "Kill the monster, do not kill my grandchildren."

"I only kill monsters," Geralt assured her. Monsters were often the makers of monsters, but these were children, they had time to grow, to move on. All hope was not lost yet.

Pinako nodded tightly and left the inn. Shortly after, Geralt retired for bed.

* * *

The Elric's home was nice in the way that village homes often weren't, but signs of neglect were beginning to show themselves in the cracks in the paint and the way the bricks of the roof shuffled slightly in the light breeze. There was no farmland attached to it but there were acres of free space, so the parents hadn't been farmers like so many that lived around these parts. Well, he already knew that the father was a collector at the very least, possibly even a sorcerer who had gone rogue. But there was nothing to be learnt about the mother from the outside of the house.

For the sake of knowing whether or not the children were home before he went snooping around, Geralt knocked on the front door and a scrambling followed as someone moved quickly up some stairs. So there was a basement and at least one child had been down there.

A distrustful face greeted him when the door creaked open a couple of inches, and Geralt was instantly caught by a pair of _amber_ eyes. He felt his brow crease as he tried to figure out why on earth this child could possibly have such features and the child flinched back in response. Snapping out of his trance, Geralt lessened his stare and tried to convey that he didn't have any murderous intent. It didn't seem to work too well, but at least the child spoke.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" the child demanded, his angry voice at odds with how he hid most of his body behind the door.

"My name is Geralt and I'm here because Pinako is worried about you and your brother," he said, telling the truth, after a fashion. It did seem to lessen the child's distrust. Edward, he assumed, stopped gripping the door so tightly but made no move to open it any further.

"Granny sent you?" He asked, just shy of hopeful, before shaking his head and continuing, "well, you can't come in here, Granny should have told you that."

"And why is that?" He doubted Edward would tell him the truth, but he could easily manoeuvre around any false excuses and force his way in, he was sure.

"Well... Al is..." He looked behind the door for a second and Geralt could just about follow his gaze to a staircase headed downwards. "Al is very sick. It's contagious."

"Then why haven't you called for a doctor?"

"The doctor would get sick."

"Well, I could take a look at him, I know something of medicine and I've never caught an illness before." True, his mutations ensured that much. He wouldn't be safe from a curse or any unnatural ailment, but diseases did not affect him.

"Well, well-" Edward struggled, visibly searching for another excuse with his eyes flickering to and throw. "Me and Al never get sick either, but this disease is a special one, it gets people who don't get sick."

"Hm," Geralt grunted and didn't even pretend to conceal his disbelief. "Well, you're not sick and I'm willing to take that chance."

Another excuse was on its way and Edward began to splutter a string of obviously fake coughs but Geralt had had enough of waiting at the doorstep and pushed his way inside. There was a surprising amount of resistance from Edward as he pushed against the door that didn't match up with his spindly childish limbs. Nevertheless, he was inside.

The first thing that struck Geralt was the smell. It wasn't pungent, but it was familiar enough for him to know that it didn't come from the dishes in the worn washbasin or the handful of spoiled fruit in the bowl on the dining table. He spared very little attention to the details of the house, the exception being the small painted family picture, one of many paintings that were hung around, with the father covered by a slip of parchment. He did not see any of the striking features that Edward held on the mother, her hair was chestnut and her eyes a dark blue. He wanted to see the father, to check for the amber eyes, but there were more pressing concerns at hand.

Edward was jumping around him, trying to get his attention and rattling off a list of reasons why he shouldn't have just barged in. But Geralt had little patience for polite children, nevermind those that got in the way of his job. "Smells like your brother died to me," he said offhandedly.

That shut the boy up and the silence was jarring enough for Geralt to pause in his stride towards the stairs. He turned his head to look behind him and found Edward standing stock still and breathless. "He's not dead," Edward said after a moment, quietly.

"Then what is?" Turning his body to face Edward more fully, he crouched down so that he was on the same level as him. "That smell..." He said carefully. "I'm a Witcher, I know it very well."

Much like Pinako, Edward didn't appear to be any more or less frightened by the reveal. Instead, he looked Geralt hard in the eyes, determined. "I know. But nothing in there is dead. Or dying. Trust me." And Geralt did.

Sometimes things wreaked of death, generally if they fancied their meals half-decayed. There was the possibility that the monster had been storing its victims before eating them, if it ate them at all. But then something would be dead and Edward seemed to think that nothing was. "Why don't you show me?"

Hesitating, Edward looked to the side and wrung his hands. "You have to make a promise, first," he said to the wall and then looked at him for the next part. "You have to promise not to kill her."

That... wasn't good. For one, Geralt was being paid to kill a monster. If he didn't kill the monster, he didn't get paid. Sometimes he sent the monster packing. Generally, in those cases, the monsters weren't actually monsters but desperate people looking to survive. This was not one of those cases.

And it was beginning to look like Edward was attached to it. To 'her'.

"I promise," Geralt lied but Edward didn't seem to pick up on the deception because he nodded and walked past Geralt, leading the way down the stairs. There were no candles along the stairway, but Geralt could see the traces of blood along the walls, some of it taking the shape of small red handprints.

Several steps later, slowed by Edward's much smaller gait, they came to a stop in front of a wooden door with a seal written in blood. It was dry but it didn't seem aged. "S'posed to keep her inside," Edward informed him, seeing where his gaze had landed. "...Didn't work very well."

Edward reached for the handle and creaked the door open, fluttering a number of parchment seals that had long since broken along the seams of the door. The smell hit them almost immediately, watering Geralt's eyes despite his desensitisation to such experiences. But Edward was clearly used to it and powered into the room without thought, but prevented Geralt from coming through completely with a finger to his mouth and a quiet shushing sound.

"H-hey... mum," He stuttered out, some of the nervousness that Geralt had been waiting to appear trickling into his posture and voice.

Mum...

Fuck.

From his limited view through the half-open the door, Geralt got a glimpse of blood splattered surfaces littered with all sorts of arcane artefacts and aged books. Complicated diagrams tinted red were hung up on all visible walls and two hulking sets of armour stood in the corner. Worryingly, he couldn't confidently identify half of the magic for what it was. The father had been delving into magics that were either lost to time or very, very forbidden. When a single blood-stained and twisted arm flopped into view and grappled at the ground, he became almost completely sure that it was the latter.

"I, ah, I brought a friend... a _friend_ , mum, a _friend_." Edward crept towards the origin of the arm. "His name is Geralt and he is a _friend_."

The... 'mum'... did not respond with words, but a gurgling bubbled up into the air, followed by a few strained groans as though whatever was attempting to speak did not have the lung capacity to support the endeavour.

"Geralt... you can come in now... slowly..." Edward murmured and Geralt did so, slowly shifting around the door so it did not creak, and saw the 'mum' for what it was.

Ribs clawed heavenward, heaving with each breath the creature took as though they were reaching for that which they could not have and falling back each time. Cradled by the ribs between stretched skin and bone was a curdling soup of organs and blood. Four limbs tore out from the mess, spread like a quadruped despite the pair of hands and feet that created their distinction. The fingers scratched and grappled at the basement floor, aimless and purposeless in their ministrations. And its face... Upside down and gaping endlessly with a crown of tangled hair. The similarities between it and the picture of the mother on the fireplace were few, but they were there.

For once in Geralt's many years in life, the rumours had underestimated the sheer horror of the creature they described.

"This is Geralt, mum, Geralt is a friend," Edward gestured to Geralt. Despite how familiar he was with the monster, his face had paled considerably.

The monster made what could be construed as an inquisitive noise if one was able to differentiate one tortured groan from the other, and its glowing eyes laid sight on Geralt. With gangly limbs that shouldn't have allowed for any sort of coordinated movement at all, the creature made its way over to him until it was by his feet and Geralt had a bird's eye view of the mess of organs in the cradle of its body. It did not attack him.

"Thank fuck," Edward whispered and Geralt made no comment on the vulgarity despite how awkward it sounded in the boy's high pitched voice. He would grow into it. If he could grow past this first. 

"Where's your brother, Edward?" Geralt asked but kept his eyes to the disgusting display beneath him just incase it forgot what Edward had said earlier or decided it didn't mind hurting Edward's feelings by eating his 'friend'. Clearly, this thing had loyalty, which could shed some light on how it came to be. He sincerely doubted it was his mother, but perhaps her body had been used in its creation.

"Over there," Edward whispered and Geralt was saved having to take his eyes off the creature because it appeared to hear Edward too. Crooking its head to the side with a sick cracking sound, it shuffled around, sloshing blood onto the ground as it did so, and headed towards the corner that Geralt previously hadn't been able to see. It came to a stop at the sleeping body of a boy that shared the same golden hair that Edward had but shorn at a much closer cut. His eyes were closed so he didn't get to see if those were the same too.

Geralt took a step closer but found himself freezing the moment his foot left the ground as the creature let out a wretched cry and geared up to attack. Burdened by its mishappen body as it was, the creature was not fast, but it wasn't slow, and soon organs and blood were being cast about the room as it dashed towards him.

After he drew his sword but before he could complete his swing, Edward barreled into him with surprising force and sent them both behind the door and threw his body against it so that it would close. "You promised not to kill her!" He screamed, catching his teeth a few times as the creature banged against the door he was forcing closed. Even through the solid oak, its inhuman cries could be heard loud and clear.

Every instinct in Geralt's body was telling him to throw the child up the stairs out of harm's way and kill the monster, but he fought with himself for a clearer mind. He didn't think that Pinako would be so amenable if he traumatised her grandchild any more than he already had been. Instead, he sheaved his sword and placed it underneath the doorknob as a sure door stop, keeping the creature contained even as Edward gingerly lifted himself off the floor.

No words were passed between them as they climbed the stairs, Edward having accepted his sword as both a sign that he was unarmed (not true but the sword was his main weapon) and that he had decided not to kill the monster. Yet. It was when they were both sat around the dining table that the conversation started.

"I need to know how you made that thing," Geralt said and looked at Edward properly for the first time since they'd been outside the basement. Now that they were upstairs and the light of the mid-day sun was filtering through the windows, he could see that some of the blood had splashed onto Edward's face and was now dripping onto the wood.

"It's not a _thing_ , it's my mum," Edward insisted as Geralt got up and headed towards the washbasin. The water wasn't clean since it had several dirty dinner plates swimming in it but he wasn't about to venture outside in search of a well when knowing what was crawling beneath his feet. He fished for a rag in his pouch and soaked it in the water before returning to Edward, crouching so that they were level once again.

"How did you make _her_ , then?" He amended a little sarcastically, but not overtly, he didn't want Edward to be unable to explain to him what the hell he'd been messing with because he was crying too much. Telegraphing his movement clearly so that Edward didn't flinch, he took the sodden rag to his face and began to wash off the blood.

"We used an alchemic ritual... one of Dad's books talked about it, it was supposed to raise the dead," he explained and there was a fragility to his voice that Geralt suspected he'd been doing his best to hide until now. "But I'm finding out that a lot of Dad's stuff... Well, it does what it says, but not the way that you think."

Most of the blood was gone by the time he'd finished speaking, so Geralt got up and wrung out the rag in the washbasin. "Could you show me the book?" He pocketed the rag and turned back to Edward who was no longer sat at the table but running up the stairs to the second floor. Geralt grunted and shrugged, sitting back down at the table. He didn't have to wait long before Edward was back, a thick leather-bound tome in hand. He set it down in front of Geralt with a thud and didn't bother pulling a chair, choosing to stand next to Geralt and peer over his shoulder.

"This language..." Geralt said as his finger skimmed across the embellished title. Whatever had been used to colour the typography had long since faded away but the indentations were still there. "...It's very old."

"Can you read it? Or do I have to translate?" Edward asked, sounding very put upon and like he thought very little of Geralt if he couldn't so much as read a very rarely practised and nigh deceased language. At least he wasn't quivering, Geralt reasoned, and ignored the slight.

"No," He said simply and gestured for Edward to skip to the relevant part. With a heave that sent dust dancing across the pages, he parted the book and turned some more until he reached a page with a folded corner that was significantly less dusty than the ones that came before it. _A space for life_ , he translated the title roughly in his head. There were many different ways to interpret the words in languages so old because, more often than not, there weren't any direct translations because of how drastically the world had changed since their use. It was a wonder that Edward and Alphonse had produced anything at all.

Reading through the passage and ignoring the curious looks Edward kept sending him as though he couldn't see him, he started to determine the problem. There were two parts to the ritual, one that created a body, or the 'space', and one that gave it 'life'. Both parts were comprised of many steps that could be interpreted in many different ways. Something had gone wrong when Edward had been creating the body and it was highly possible that the second part had been performed incorrectly as well.

"How do you know that the 'life' you connected to the body was your mother's?" He asked, bypassing the issue of the body because there was nothing to be asked and he doubted Edward would disagree if he said that something had gone wrong there.

"Well, I used a different ritual for that, the binding one," he said and turned back several pages until they reached a title that read _'bind'_. Or _'rope'_ , or _'connect'_ , or any number of descriptions along those lines. "We used our blood to bind it to mum because we share her blood."

Reading the ritual, the pieces were slotting into place. "Your brother, how long has he been asleep?"

"Since we did the ritual," Edward's face dropped several shades and his amber eyes widened. "You don't mean... but we used both..."

"Generally, when you give an excess amount of resources for magic to work with, it doesn't work at all or it takes what it needs," Geralt explained and a horrified look of understanding settled on Edward's face.

"It didn't take mum's soul... it took Al's," Edward whispered and all Geralt could do was nod. There wasn't much to say to a child who'd just realised that he'd turned his own little brother into a monster.

"So, so it didn't, it didn't take both our blood an-and see, and give mum, it-it took Al's, Al's blood and left mine..." He stuttered and his hands gripped his hair and began to pull. "I made Al... I made Al into..." Whether Edward didn't finish his sentence because he didn't know what to call the thing in the basement or because the truth was too harsh to say aloud, Geralt didn't know. But the tears that came to his eyes said enough.

"We can fix it," Geralt said in a way of comfort. He didn't know what to do with a crying child. He went for a pat on the shoulder but the movement was awkward and foreign. Regardless, Edward leant into it, heavily. Soon enough he had a sniffling child collapsed against him and his arm moved from his shoulder to his waist to make sure that he didn't fall. A bubble of snot burst from Edward's nose and the child went and rubbed his face against Geralt's torso. Nice. "I said we can fix it."

"We can?" Edward looked up to him and his eyes were wet and red-rimmed and still amber. His cheek was smushed up against Geralt's armour but it didn't hide the sticky patch of snot.

"We can perform the binding ritual again, this time on Alphonse's body, and return the soul to its rightful place," he explained. It should work, it worked to transfer the soul from one body to another, so it'll be the same this time around as well, he reasoned. Then the monster wouldn't have 'life', it would just be a 'space for life' and thus he could say the monster was dead.

Given that Alphonse didn't stay a monster even inside of his own body.

Dismissing pointless defeatist thoughts, he moved Edward so that he could stand up, but the little limpet continued to hang onto him even as he climbed down the stairs. Once he was there, however, he did not remove the sword. There was no banging now and no need to disturb the monster prematurely. "Can you perform the ritual on your own? It won't let me close to your brother's body."

"Yes," Edward said, giving one final sniff and pulling himself from Geralt's side somewhat reluctantly. "I don't know if he will attack you but... protect your head, she, I mean he, was collecting organs, I think, because he kept losing his, and I don't think he's too picky about which ones."

Geralt's armour wasn't impervious to every kind of attack and there was more than one way to get around a person's armour, but Edward was a child who probably thought that Witchers were essentially invulnerable, so he nodded as though it was true that he only really needed to look out for his brain, eyes, mouth and nose.

"Okay," Edward whispered, passed the sword to Geralt and opened the door, introducing Geralt as a friend once more before heading towards his brother's body. The creature seemed more interested in what Edward was doing now that he was close to the body, so Geralt slipped in with only a cursory glance from it. Sword readied but sheathed, he stood by as Edward began muttering to himself and performing the ritual from memory.

The creature was mostly passive although it piped up when Edward pricked his finger, but that was panic at Edward's act of self-harm, not recognition of the ritual, given that a few cooing noises and shushes from Edward calmed it down thereafter. It was surreal to watch the innocent enough looking child interact almost affectionately with the monster, evidence from the months he must have spent down in the basement calling it 'mum' and caring for his comatose brother.

It was when the glow of alchemic light lit up the room that things became desperate.

The monster lost all sense the second Edward clapped his hands and put his palms to his brother's chest. An inhuman scream split the air, so loud that Geralt's hands went to his ears reflexively. The couple of seconds hesitation it caused was enough time for the monster to pounce on the site of the ritual before Geralt could leap across the room and grab on to it. Organs squelched against leather, ribs cracked and blood spilt as he drew the creature back by its protruding bones and tumbled to the ground.

Edward was screaming but he didn't have the time to focus on the sound as the creature flipped itself in a surprising feat of grace. Except its body remained upside down while its limbs cracked and twisted to grab onto him. Innards showered over him as he was caged by the creature, struggling against it as the razor-sharp ends of ribs came centimetres away from impaling him in several places.

Its face shot forwards like a snapping turtle and Geralt just managed to dodge his head to the side, hearing the strong clacking of teeth right by his ear. Again, it reared back and aimed, sending Geralt to the right this time, catching a quick glimpse of Ed where he crouched over Al's bloody body before he was forced to turn to the left with another clack of teeth.

With a great heave, he threw the creature across the room, taking advantage of its focus on his head and slack of its limbs, sending it smashing into the opposite wall. Instinctively, his hands went for the potions inside of his pouch but came back with broken glass vials. Shit. With a crooked groan, the creature lifted itself from where it had landed and locked eyes with Edward. Shit. Shit.

Grabbing his discarded sword, Geralt launched himself once again at the monster but came up short as it jumped out of the way, unhindered by its broken legs trailing behind it. His face met concrete and his nose crunched, blacking out his vision a moment too long.

Edward's scream ripped into the air, accompanied by the creatures own, creating an unholy chorus that sang of the contrast between living and dead. When Geralt's vision returned to him, the creature's jaw had attached itself to Edward's right arm and multiple ribs were lodged into his left leg. 

Edward screamed again and his arm left his shoulder.

In one sweep, Geralt sent his sword crashing through the ribs that had pierced Edward, separating him from the creature. He then grabbed the creature in a chokehold, Edward's detached arm still clenched between its jaws, and allowed for Edward to make his getaway up the stairs.

But Edward didn't run.

"What are you doing?!" Geralt shouted after him, staggering backwards as the creature thrashed its two remaining limbs and twisted this way and that. Its head shook vigorously in an attempt to escape, shredding the arm in its mouth during the process until it was in bloody chunks on the ground, swimming with the rest of the spilt blood and organs.

"Fixing my brother!" Edward shouted back, his voice cracking, limping with desperate ferocity over to the sets of armour in the corner. He knocked one down and the seven-foot suit crashed into the ground, within reach of Edward's hand.

He performed the ritual again to the backdrop of Geralt's fight, alchemic light fizzing in the air once more. Screaming, the creature gave one last desperate effort, escaping Geralt's grasp. But when it landed on the floor it did so with a dead thud and moved no more.

Silence took over the room like a noiseless shock that felt like it should have made them jump. The creature was lifeless, sprawled across the floor, and all that could be heard was the heaving of both of their breaths and the dripping of blood from splatters all across the room.

Then, there was a second thud. Edward collapsed onto the ground, skin pale and bloodless. "Fuck." Geralt cursed and ran towards the small-bodied child. While awake, he was a boisterous little thing that gave the impression of something much fuller but unconscious without one limb and shards of bone riddling the other, he was so small.

Gently, afraid he would accidentally kill Edward with one wrong move, he crouched and readied himself to pick him up.

"Stop."

Jumping backwards slightly, Geralt scanned the room for the second voice that had just sounded. It had been high pitched and childish, but it was different from Edwards. "It's okay," it said again, but the tone of the voice wasn't convincing. It sounded like it wanted to cry but didn't quite know how. "I'll pick him up."

A great tinny shuffling began and the pieces of fallen armour trembled. Slotting together like pieces in a puzzle, they assembled, and the seven-foot spiked suit of armour rose to stand. Once complete, its form obstructed the candlelight and cast a shadow over the entirety of Geralt's crouched figure. Shrouded as he was, if Geralt wasn't a Witcher, he was sure that he wouldn't have been able to see the details of the blood across the great armour's surface or the spikes upon its joints. But he had no doubt that he still would have been able to see the red lights in place for eyes behind its helm.

"Granny... Granny will know what to do," the armour said, unsure, as though it was looking for someone to confirm that yes, Granny would know what to do. But there was no one to confirm, only Geralt who honestly wasn't sure that Pinako would be able to fix any of this. And that was when it hit him. Alphonse was the one who was speaking.

He hadn't been able to get a clear look at the body of the boy in the corner during his fight, but now his head snapped in its direction and found a bloody mess in two pieces. Even if the ritual had been successful after the monster had made its attack, Alphonse would have died. Hence Edward's armoured solution. The child was smart, quick-thinking even in desperate situations. Had tragedy not befallen him, perhaps he could have made a decent soldier or even a monster hunter.

Except, Pinako made metal limbs for a living, didn't she?

"Open the door, please," Alphonse asked as he stooped down and gently picked up Edward. If it weren't for the slow rise and fall of his chest, he would have appeared dead. Turning away from the barely alive boy, Geralt opened the door as asked and followed Alphonse as he made his way as quickly yet as carefully as he could across the grounds between their's and Pinako's house. At some point during the fight, it had begun to rain and the rivulets of water washed away the red from Alphonse's grey surface. 

"Granny!" He cried out once they were in viewing distance of the house and this time it sounded like the shock from earlier was fading away and the true terror of the situation was coming into focus. Geralt had seen it plenty of times before, where victims became numb enough to their situation to either sit and be calm or sort themselves out before reality came crashing down on them. "Granny, help!"

"Alphonse?!" Pinako cried out once she was out of the door and herded the three of them inside, sparing very little notice for Geralt as Edward's health became the priority. For now, she seemed to accept Alphonse's no doubt confusing state for the sake of Edward's nearing end.

Voice turning stern and commanding, she directed both Geralt and Alphonse once Edward had been set down on the patient's table in what looked like some sort of medic's room crossed with a forge. Metal limbs in various states of construction were atop workspaces alongside barrels of scrap ranging from rusted swords to broken farmer's tools. Along the walls on the side of the room furthest away from the fire were shelves displaying the basics of a healer's itinerary with a focus on pain relief, alongside jars of plants that Geralt knew were used prolifically in all sorts of magical practices.

First, she relieved his pain, using a mixture of magical remedies and simple herb combinations. Then she stopped what bleeding she could, relying more on non-magical means, and examined the leg. All the while, Alphonse hovered, his new metal body radiating anxiety as it creaked and shifted.

"Granny, do you need my hel- Edward!" Another child's voice burst into the room as a young blonde girl appeared in the doorway, blue eyes already gathering tears.

"Winry!" Pinako ordered and the girl stood to attention despite what she had discovered. "I need you to take Alphonse and Geralt out of this room and into the kitchen, you can attend to any minor wounds they may have over there, I need this space right now." For magic, Geralt guessed. Magic she didn't like to practice. Looking at Alphonse and understanding that the armour was hollow, he could see why she didn't have much fondness for it when considering all of the examples of the art practised in this village that he had witnessed in one day alone.

"But, but-" Winry began but Pinako was quick to cut her off, repeating her order more succinctly, and the girl snapped her mouth shut, gestured for Geralt to follow her and then Alphonse when he reintroduced himself.

In the kitchen, after she'd set both of them down at the table and gathered what supplies she needed from various cupboards, she let loose. "Can someone tell me what's happening?!" She cried out and the tears were set free.

"I... I don't know," Alphonse confessed and gingerly placed a massive hand onto Winry's hair and petted her. "My memories are... messy and... I think I don't want to remember, maybe."

 _Good,_ Geralt thought to himself. The child would be much better off he didn't have to relive his brief life as a mindless murdering monster. Edward would, there was no escaping that, but if one child was burdened and the other free... There were worse things. Although, Geralt had seen few worse than this and he had seen many, many terrible things.

"You look like Ed and Al's dad," Winry said after her crying subsided, leaving only sniffling in its wake. Geralt scrunched his face at that, it was impossible for him to be anyone's father given his condition, but those yellow eyes had been strikingly similar to his own.

"I'm no one's father," he said but the girl didn't seem convinced. Instead, she ran out of the room and returned with an old but well looked after book. She handed it over to him and he turned the featureless cover to the first page where a faded name was handwritten. _Trisha Elric_. He turned another page and was greeted with a very detailed sketch of hills along the horizon, a little village nestled in the centre. Resembool, he realised.

"Mum drew a lot," Alphonse explained. "She didn't draw a lot after Dad left but... Granny says Dad was the one who made her paints and stuff, so maybe that's why." Geralt looked at the formidable seven-foot armour, the flaming red eyes and the nothingness behind them and found that it wasn't all that difficult to picture the sleeping boy from earlier when hearing his uncertain voice.

"Turn more pages," Winry instructed and he did, each time looking to her to see if he'd gotten to the right page or not until she huffed and took the book from him and found the page herself. The little book was a mix of charcoal sketches and painted pictures of various views that he presumed could be found around the village, from sheep to people to food to tools. He understood why the house had an abundance of paintings now. When Winry returned it to him, it was a picture of a person painted with colour and amber eyes stared into his.

He could understand the confusion, the man on the page had a strong jaw and wore his hair similarly to Geralt, but his was golden where Geralt's was white, not to mention that the man was sporting an interestingly cut beard. "They're not the same," Alphonse said and he sounded disappointed, which Geralt was not going to delve into because no one should want a Witcher for a father no matter what they had been through.

"I'm a Witcher, I can't have children," Geralt said to Winry and handed over the sketchbook. Winry looked like she had something else to say on the contrary but Pinako entered the room before she could get the words past her lips.

"He'll live," she announced, grimly, but the two children cried out joyously anyway, asking if they could see him, to which they got a hard no and an instruction to go to bed. The two of them both sulked and mumbled this and that and the other, but they complied and headed upstairs.

The room now vacated of children, Pinako cut to the heart of the problem as Geralt was growing used to her doing and had him explain what had happened. For a while, once all had been said and done, Pinako did not speak.

Eventually, she sighed and looked out at the moon that was slowly on the rise and took a seat across from Geralt at the table. "Winry didn't get around to healing you, did she?"

"No, but I can take care of myself," Geralt said, intending to deal with the his wounds once he was back at the inn, but Pinako's disapproving stare was convincing enough to let him know that he wouldn't be returning to the inn for a while anyway so he might as well address his issues in front of her trained eyes.

"I'm glad you came to our village," she said as he cleaned the cuts on his face. They had stopped dribbling blood some time ago but he supposed, even with his condition, he would be better off not chancing his luck with worsening them through neglect. "Those boys... they are not okay, but they could have been worse. I should have talked to them about messing with magic long before but at least they have seen the consequences for themselves now."

"That magic... It is not something I am familiar with," he said. Even the magic that Pinako had practised while attending to Edward had been new to him. The resources were similar if not the same as most practices but the methods she had used and the way she had handled them had been very different.

"How old are you?" Pinako asked, taking Geralt off guard. "I know witchers live longer than the rest of us humans, but it is hard to tell sometimes."

"I don't keep count but somewhere towards the beginning of the century, perhaps, but I don't see how that is relevant to your magic," he said with more bite than he had used during the past few days. All this time around children was dulling his attitude. By morning, he promised to himself, Resembool would be far behind him.

"Oh, it is," Pinako responded, nonplussed. "I am not a sorcerer, I did not formally learn the magic I use and those who search for users of magic cannot find me for our magic is fundamentally different from theirs. Both are very, very old, but their's is Elven, while ours is Xerxian."

"Those books in that house... that language is still taught in some circles, it is not called Xerxian now, but it is, isn't it?" The nameless language, one of many. Still taught primarily for use in code and because there were texts written in the language and the origin puzzled many.

"Yes, Xerxes is a city long gone, but its legacy still seeps into some of your magic... Witchers are created through alchemy, after all, and Xerxian magic is an alchemic magic," Pinako shifted and got up to the washbasin, pulling a few herbs from some cupboards and fixing two drinks. "A long time has passed since Xerxian magic was in use, I think there may be only one witcher alive to remember it."

"I do not know any witcher old enough to match your description," he said and Pinako handed him one of the drinks. "We live long, yes, but we are not immortal."

"My teacher was one," Pinako insisted gently, taking a sip of her drink first, perhaps to show that she hadn't poisoned them. "His name was Hohenheim... He left his wife in search of a cure for his agelessness."

Geralt just grunted at that, recognising that the old woman was set in her beliefs and wasn't about to change them. He took a sip of his drink and found that it tasted like lavender and rose.

"You see it, don't you? In Edward's eyes. Hohenheim was their father." Pinako said.

At that, Geralt had to laugh, the sound coming out in a huff and a sarcastic smile. Until this day, he had been under the impression that the fact that witchers were unable to reproduce was common knowledge, but he had been proven wrong time and time again. "Whatever that man was, he wasn't a witcher, I know that to be true."

"There will be no convincing you, will there?" Pinako said sternly but her mouth was turned up slightly at one corner.

"And you," Geralt pointed out and Pinako decided that she would not be doing with a witcher inside of her house any longer and passed him his coin with an instruction to go straight to the inn and be gone by noon at the very least.

"And Geralt," she said from the doorway once he was halfway down the path to the gate. A dog with a metal leg that had been sleeping on the porch perked its head up at the sound but was quick to go back to sleep once he saw it came from Pinako. "Those boys, they were not made to live out their days as village farmers, so do look out for them when you cross paths again."

" _If,_ not when," He called back and didn't even bother to look over his shoulder when she continued speaking. It was hard not to smile a little at the woman's antics. 

"Don't be so sure," she cautioned and he heard the door close behind her.

The next day, when he passed a fine spoken gentleman with dark hair travelling with a blonde woman who's neutral face could not be read, he did not answer their questions about the rumours surrounding two magically gifted young boys. Instead, he continued on his route out of Resembool. 

For not once had he heard of such a rumour.

**Author's Note:**

> The format of Travelling Monster Slayer On Another Job is incredibly versatile. I may do more fandom fusions. Lmk if you have a particular fandom or character that you think would be cool to do. Might make a series of loosely connected one-shots. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading! I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about it 
> 
> [Tumblr](https://colerate.tumblr.com/)


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